Three times in the past week I have confirmed this. Baseball game, listening to the radio, and watching the game on TV, with the sound off. Radio guy says, for example, ‘there’s a shot up the middle for a base hit’. I look at the TV, and the batter hasen’t swung yet. He then hits one up the middle for a base hit. My question then, why the 5 second delay on the ‘live’ TV game?
There are a lot of reasons for this I’ve found out. It’s not likely done to keep the announcer from getting a four-letter word on the air.
There are various delays caused with satelitte transmissions and also the capacity of your cable system to deliver the picture and sound to you.
There were a few more technical reasons somebody told me and certainly other people know more.
Some fans are petitioning the radio station that produces our local NFL games to delay the broadcast by that fraction so that the radio play-by-play more nearly matches the TV broadcast.
BobT is right. In a nutshell, the signal goes from the stadium to the local transmission site, up to the satellite, back down from the satellite to a master control at a TV station, through the air to your cable company and then down the cable to you. There can even be more steps than that.
One other thing you might consider. My health club had cable TV. I had a walkman that got channels 2-13. So I could watch WLS channel 7 and tune into the station on my walkman to hear it. The sound and picture were in synch. Then the health club switched to Direct TV. Now the sound is ahead of the TV.
I have noticed that same delay between radio and T
V also. Assumed it was deliberately done as a delay. I guess not.
So what everyone is saying is that if I hook up my old antenna to the TV,( which I actually can do,) then there will be no difference between the radio and TV sound transmission?
There is such a machine that will put broadcasts on a time delay. It’s not just to account for delays in transmission.
For some programs, it’s not uncommon for time delay to be used. Live programs, for example, use it so that if the announcer or a performer uses unacceptable language, said language can be censored. This has happened on Saturday Night Live. George Carlin was hosting the show one night, and the producers kept the show on a six-second time delay in the event Carlin said something he shouldn’t. Cite.
Robin
I think Direct TV has a longer delay than other ways of getting the signal. The signal probably has to make at least 2 trips to a satellite and back down before it gets to you. Radio most likely just goes over phone lines from the stadium/arena to the station that broadcasts the game.
If you are listening to the sound of your local TV station then this would be true. Otherwise, maybe/maybe not.
To summarize what others have said, using a ball game carried on ESPN as an example.
The TV signal goes from the stadium to a satellite to the ESPN control center. It goes from the ESPN control center to a satellite to receivers at Dish Network/DirecTV/Your Local Cable Company.
If you’re watching on cable, the signal then goes by wire from Your Local Cable Company to your house. Otherwise it goes from Dish Network/DirecTV to another satellite to your house.
Even at the speed of light, all these trips back and forth to satellites take time.
The radio signal, on the other hand, goes by telephone line (usually) either to your local radio station, or to the network control center, then back to your local station. Either way, a much shorter trip than back and forth to space several times.
Your cite is incorrect according to the authors of Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live. According to them, the only time a delay was used was when Richard Pryor hosted. They describe the fear that he would find out about the delay and the minor subterfuges that were used to disguise the delay.
I seemed to recall it was used for both Carlin and Pryor, but I could be wrong.
Be that as it may, time delay is still a common practice. It gives the producers the ability to censor stuff that may violate the network’s standards and practices.
Robin
Yeah, I don’t think it makes a difference if it’s live or not if you are getting your signal from a satellite.
I have a TV tuner card on my computer, hooked into the cable service.
Our big screen TV is in the same room (way down at the other end, but I can still hear/see it). It uses satellite via Direct TV.
When I tune the same show on my computer that is coming in on the big screen, there is always a delay on the Direct TV set, no matter if it’s live or not.
Not that I’m arguing with the general logic here, but I don’t think the transmission time to the satellites is a factor. After all, the speed of light is 186,000 miles/second…those satellites aren’t that far away.
I often listen to the radio and watch TV and sometimes there is a delay, sometimes not. It all comes over the same cable (and so, for that matter, does the radio) so it is not the cable company. And sending the signal to a geosynchronos satelite and back adds 44/186 or less than a quarter second, so that’s not the explanation. I mean it would be barely perceptible, less than the difference between seeing the ball hit the bat and hearing the crack when you in the bleachers 400 feet away. (Sound goes about 1000 ft/sec.)
Transmission to a satellite and back is two or three tenths of a second. There is also electronic delay, which occurs partly in the transmission equipment and partly in any form of translation between analog and digital for instance.
Note that anything broadcast through the ‘ether’ or down a coax cable or a fiber optic has these translations, the electromagnetic signal has an analog form even if it is coded into digital pulses.
I was watching ESPN classic in Eugene OR, while my friend was also watching it(last years Fiesta Bowl) in Washington DC. We talked about the game on the phone. His game was a few seconds ahead of mine.
Just wanted to add that for what it is worth.
Imagine the bets you could make while you and your buddys watched a game on the TV, and you had a hidden radio earpiece…
‘bet he’s gonna hit one past the first baseman…5 bucks says he does…’
The difference would be in how far the signal travelled before it got to your cable company. If the cable is picking up your local TV station on their antenna and sending it back down the line, there won’t be any noticable delay. If they are broadcasting a live sporting event going up and down to space several times before they get it, there will be more of a delay.
You can also see this on news stations like CNN where the studio anchor is talking to someone in Iraq on a satellite phone. You will see a delay of 2-3 seconds after the anchor asks the question before the reporter responds.
You don’t think so? Well, let’s do some math. Geosynchronous satellites orbit at an altitude of 22,400 miles up. If a signal has to make two round trips, as a previous poster suggested, this is a total distance of about 89,600 miles. At the speed of light, 186,292 miles per second, that’s a trip delay of about .48 seconds or nearly half a second. Ok, so not much, but then you have retransmission delays, landline propagation delays, etc. I all adds up.
Another reason why TV will be delayed more than radio for live sports events is that they normally have more than one camera and the producer has to decide what camera to use to get the best shot.